Does everything point to Michigan beating Iowa Saturday in Indy? Not by a long shot.

I know what most of you are thinking, at least when it comes to Saturday night’s Big Ten football championship game.

You think Michigan is a devastating slugger of a heavyweight, unlike all those bantamweight tomato cans Iowa barely beat on points to win the West division.

You think the real Big Ten title game was played Saturday in Ann Arbor, Michigan’s 30-24 win in the college regular-season Game of the Year.

You think if the Wolverines could score 30 points on the Ohio State defense that entered the weekend ranked ahead of Iowa in scoring defense and total defense, it surely can do likewise against the Hawkeyes’ vaunted ‘D.’

You think Michigan has a 2024 first-round NFL draft choice at quarterback in J.J. McCarthy, who won the starting job over Cade McNamara, who then went to Iowa to become its starting QB only to get injured and be unavailable for Saturday’s game.

You think Iowa has completed just 49 percent of its passes while Michigan has completed 74 percent.

You think the Wolverines have at least four 2024 NFL draftees-to-be on their defense.

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You think the Wolverines have scored 235 more points than the Hawkeyes while allowing even fewer than the puny 12.2 per game Iowa has yielded.

You think Michigan’s Blake Corum has twice as many rushing touchdowns (22) as the Hawkeyes’ team (11). You think the Wolverines’ Roman Wilson has more receiving touchdowns (11) than the Hawkeyes’ team (9).

You think Corum had a 67-yard touchdown run and Wilson had a 75-yard TD catch against Iowa in the first quarter of the 2021 Big Ten championship when both were mere sophomores.

You think Michigan won’t have the kind of letdown you might normally assume it would after winning such a battle with Ohio State. Because you know the Wolverines won an equally emotional, ferocious game over the Buckeyes two years ago and proceeded to plaster the Hawkeyes in Indy, 42-3.

So, you think Michigan will win convincingly again in Saturday’s meeting.

No, I’m not a psychic. I just use extrasensory perception to identify information hidden from the normal senses. I also dabble in amateur psychology, so let me tell you this: You’re overthinking it.

Forget all the mumbo jumbo you just read and lock into the important things that will make you see the light about the mammoth upset to come. Such as:

After Corum’s long TD run against Iowa two Decembers ago, he carried four more times for a total of 7 yards. In other words, he was silenced!

McCarthy, McNamara’s understudy in 2021, completed just 33.3 percent of his passes (1-of-3) against the Hawkeyes with an interception that game. Iowa picked him off once every three passes!

(Corum and McCarthy played superbly in Michigan’s 27-14 win over Iowa last year in Ann Arbor, but the league championship wasn’t on the line, was it?)

Iowa’s Tory Taylor has punted 281 times as a Hawkeye. Michigan’s Tommy Doman has just 37 career punts. If punting is winning as we in Iowa are told is gospel, the Hawkeyes have a punter with over seven times more experience doing the winning.

At least eight and maybe as many as 12 Ohio State fans who optimistically bought tickets to Saturday’s game in Indy will actually attend it. All will root against Michigan. That will help Iowa’s cause.

Finally, the law of averages is firmly on the Hawkeyes’ side. This will be the last Big Ten championship of the 10 that have pitted the West champ against the East champ. The East is 9-0 with an average winning margin of 21.2 points over the last five title games.

Those numbers are unsustainable. Michael Jordan’s Bulls never won 10 straight championships. Neither did Tom Brady’s Patriots or Babe Ruth’s Yankees or Tiger Woods in any major tournament.

The Iowa wrestling team won nine straight NCAA tournaments from 1978 to 1986. Iowa State stopped the Hawkeyes from getting a 10th. Nobody gets a 10th-straight title, not even the mighty Big Ten East in football.

So everything adds up to an Iowa victory over the Wolverines. Despite what you think.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com